Romanian-Spanish duo Cirstea-Tormo advances to French Open 2018 women's doubles second round

Romanian-Spanish duo Sorana Cirstea/Sara Sorribes Tormo on Wednesday advanced to the second round of the women's double event at the French Open 2018 tennis tournament, after defeating Jelena Ostapenko (Latvia) / Elena Vesnina (Russia) 1-6 6-3 6-4. 

Cirstea and Sorribes Tormo unexpectedly prevailed over the tenth-seeded pairing in an hour and 48 minutes. 

After a devastating first set, Cirstea and her partner led 3-0 in the second set, they were drawn 3-3, but managed to win the set 6-3. In the third set, the Romanian-Iberian double led 5-0, Ostapenko and Vesnina got threateningly close at 5-4, but Cirstea and Sorribes Tormo held on, although they double-faulted no less than ten times. 

For their performance so far, Cirstea and Sorribes Tormo won 22,000 euros and 130 WTA doubles points. Their next opponents will be Svetlana Kuznetsova (Russia) and Lucie Safarova (Czech Republic), who defeated Belinda Bencic (Switzerland)/Marjeta Vondrousova (Czech Republic) 6-2 6-4. 

In another match, Romanian-Ukrainian pairing Ana Bogdan /Olga Savchuk was defeated by Ying-Ying Duan (China)/ Aliaksandra Sasnovich (Belarus) in the first round of the doubles event 6-3 3-6 6 -1. 

Bogdan and Savchuk got 10 points and 11,000 euros. 

Other Romanians to play in the women's doubles event are: Irina Bara and Mihaela Buzarnescu, who will pair up to meet in the first round Xenia Knoll (Switzerland) and Anna Smith (UK). Raluca Olaru and Belarusian Vera Lapko will face stronger opponents in the first round, sixth-seeded Barbora Krejcikova/Katerina Siniakova duo of the Czech Republic. Irina Begu will pair up with China's Qiang Wang against Petra Martic (Croatia)/Maria Sakkari (Greece).